Swan House: Built in 1796, the Swan House was set on a rocky promontory on what is now Dudley Street. Its circular parlor was originally surmounted by a dome at a height of 25 feet. Photograph published in Kimball, Fiske. Domestic Architecture of the American Coloni
Architectural gems have long enhanced the Dorchester landscape, one of them a splendid example ascribed by many to the great federalist-era architect, Charles Bulfinch. Built in 1796, The Swan House was located near the Roxbury line on what is now Dudley Street. One year earlier, as part of Fourth of July celebrations across the bay in Boston, the cornerstone had been laid for what is considered Bulfinch’s finest achievement, the Massachusetts State House.
Bulfinch is said to have been a cousin of Hepzibah Clarke, a rich and well-connected heiress in Boston whose wealth had been greatly increased by her association with the Mount Vernon Proprietors, Boston’s original gaggle of developers who leveled Beacon Hill and made a fortune in speculative real estate.
Swan House on the Map: Location of the Swan House (detail from 1874 Hopkins atlas). After the house was
demolished in 1880, the land was never again built upon. The boundaries of the original estate are still in place, encompassing the block that is now Mary Hannon Playground.
It is widely assumed that Hepzibah asked Bulfinch to draw up plans for her summer house in Dorchester on a Tory property that the state had confiscated after the Revolutionary War and sold to her husband, James Swan, who had emigrated to Boston from Scotland at an early age and served an apprenticeship in a Boston mercantile establishment.
The young Swan was given to causes. In 1773, at age 18, he wrote the controversial tract, “A dissuasion to Great Britain and the colonies, from the slave trade to Africa, by James Swan, a friend to the welfare of the continent,” to be published by subscription, one pistareen per book.
Swan was a firebrand who joined the Sons of Liberty and participated as one of the “Indians” in the Boston Tea Party. He also made a name for himself as a hero of the American Revolution, fighting alongside General Joseph Warren at the Battle of Bunker Hill, where, legend has it, he was twice wounded. Swan was also present at Dorchester Heights for the evacuation of Boston by the British.
During the war, Swan formed close personal friendships with George Washington, who depended on his judgment and abilities, and also Gen. Henry Knox and the. Marquis de Lafayette. Throughout this period, Swan served the Massachusetts wartime government in a succession of appointments including adjutant general, the de facto commander of the state’s military forces. By the close of the war, he attained the rank of colonel in the artillery.
In 1776, Col. Swan and Hepzibah Clarke were married. The match was hugely advantageous for Col. Swan, yet somehow he managed to overextend himself financially. In 1787, laden with debt, he went to France hoping that a change of venue would bring a change of luck. In Paris, he made many friends and became known as a brilliant financier. On the eve of the French Revolution, Madame Swan departed Paris but the colonel stayed on, conducting business through the violent overthrow of the Ancien Regime beginning in 1789, and continuing right up until mob rule and the Reign of Terror in 1793. Returning to Boston in 1794, Swan paid off his debts and entertained lavishly. It was at this time that he and Hepzibah began building their country estate in Dorchester.
She remained in Boston when he went back to France in 1798 and set himself up as a contractor supplying the French army during the Napoleonic Wars. There is evidence that Swan had remarried overseas and fathered several children. In 1808, a business associate filed a claim against him, which he stubbornly denied. Nonetheless, he was imprisoned for the next 22 years as the case dragged through the French judicial system. With lots of money and influential friends, Swan could have secured his release from prison at any time, but he refused to yield on principle. When the creditor returned once every year to renew the claim for payment, Swan politely saluted his adversary and, turning to the jailer, said simply, “My friend, return me to my chamber.”
In July 1830, the tri-color flag of the Second French Revolution flew over the debtor’s prison from which Swan was finally released. At one time one of the wealthiest men in Boston, he was now hopelessly insolvent, his health broken, and most of his allies gone. As the end neared, Swan embraced his old friend Lafayette on the steps of the Hotel de Ville. He died the next day, age 76 years.
While Swan was languishing in prison some 3,500 miles away, the beautiful and eccentric Madame Swan was luxuriating in Dorchester. The Swan House was designed in the French manner, with a large circular parlor as its most prominent feature. The parlor was 32 feet in diameter and surmounted by a dome at the height of 25 feet. Along the portico, windows that opened almost to the floor were glazed with mirrored glass as thin as eggshells.
The house was once known as the Marie Antoinette House because it was said to have been jam-packed with the
magnificent furnishings and sumptuous decorative accoutrements that had once adorned a French palace.
The Swan House (1796) was set on a rocky promontory on what is now Dudley Street; the circular parlor was originally surmounted by a dome at the height of 25 feet. : (Photograph published in Kimball, Fiske. Domestic Architecture of the American Colonies and of the Early Republic. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1922.)
How did it all get there? After the French Revolution, there were rumors of Swan’s involvement in the “affair of the pinks,” a disconnected story about a plot in which Queen Marie Antoinette was to be rescued and delivered to the United States aboard a bark named Sally of Wicasset, a ship operating under contract with the colonel. The plan called for the Sally to carry everything that a queen would need to set up house in exile.
Did French aristocrats really store their valuables on the Sally for safekeeping, or was that a cover story for the fact that the Sally’s hold was full of booty accumulated through shady dealings on the black market? No one can say for sure, but we do know that the Sally sailed without Marie Antoinette aboard. The author Francis S. Drake has recorded that it was a common bon mot of the time that “between Madame Guillotine, who took off their heads, and Swan, who took off their trunks, little was left of those unfortunate Frenchmen.”
The contents of Swan’s salon in Dorchester were auctioned off in 1857. Many items of furniture that once graced the Swan house, and before that, palatial French residences, are now in the care of the Museum of Fine Arts on Huntington Avenue in Boston. The collection is about all that remains of the Swan house, which was demolished around 1880.
A portrait of Col. Swan painted by Gilbert Stuart is on view at the MFA. I studied the portrait in trying to discern some clue to character in the countenance rendered with such mastery by the artist. But the longer I stared into the subject’s eyes, the more I had the uncanny sensation that I was the one being appraised. The next time you are at the MFA, visit the painting and become acquainted with Col. James Swan, one of the most colorful characters ever to walk the streets of Dorchester.
